Recently, a great interest in 3D printing has emerged, although many existing 3D printing technologies were first developed 2-3 decades ago. There are many mature 3D printing processes and materials; however, active research and development efforts are ongoing in this area to advance the technologies. Several companies have already started to use 3D printed parts as actual components. Many low-cost 3D printers have been released on the market, which are of particular interest to educators and hobbyists. This paper provides a brief review of 3D printing technologies and research trends. In addition, several state-of-the-art technologies and applications are introduced.

The Direct Metal Tooling (DMT) process is a kind of additive manufacturing processes, which is developed using various commercial steel powders, such as P20, P21, SUS420, and other non-ferrous metal powders. The DMT process is a versatile process that can be applied to various fields, such as the molding industry, the medical industry, and the defense industry. Among them, the application of the DMT process to the molding industry is one of its most attractive and practical applications, since the conformal cooling channel cores of injection molds can be fabricated at a slightly expensive cost by using the hybrid fabrication method of DMT technology compared with parts fabricated with machining technology. The main objectives of this study are to provide various characteristics of the parts made using the DMT process compared with the same parts machined from bulk materials and evaluate the performance of the injection mold equipped with a conformal cooling channel core fabricated using the hybrid method of the DMT process.

After the US government declared 3D printing technology a next-generation manufacturing technology, there have been many practical studies conducted to expand 3D printing technology to manufacturing technologies, called AMERICA MAKES. In particular, the Keck Center, located at the University of Texas at El Paso, has studied techniques for easily combing the 3D stacking process with space mobility and expanded these techniques to simultaneous staking techniques for multiple materials. Additionally, it developed convergence manufacturing techniques, such as direct inking techniques, in order to produce a module structure that combines electronic circuits and components, such as CUBESET. However, in these studies, it is impossible to develop a unified system using traditional independent through simple sequencing connections. This is because there are many problems in the integration between the stacking modeling of 3D printers and post-machining, such as thermal deformations, the precision accuracy of 3D printers, and independently driven coordinate problems among process systems. Therefore, in this paper, the integration method is suggested, which combines these 3D printers and subsequent machining process systems through an Internet-based cloud. Additionally, the sequential integrated system of a 3D printer, an NC milling machine, machine vision, and direct inking are realized.

Many 3D printing technologies are being used in various industries, and their demands for well-educated engineers are increasing. Moreover, novel technologies are being developed to overcome the limits of existing 3D printing technologies. In this regard, adequate education and a related curriculum especially in the Mechanical Engineering field, which is the basis of the industry, is essential. In this paper, the development of the 3D printing curriculum and its assessment in Mechanical Engineering education are proposed. The education program consisted of lectures and practice. It consisted of major 3D printing technologies, such as SLA, FDM, SLS, LOM, and Polyjet. Moreover, post-processing, room temperature vulcanizing (RTV), and coloring were also taught. The effectiveness of the proposed education program was assessed by the questionnaire survey, and the results were analyzed. Areas of improvement were deduced from the survey results.

Recently, the work machine is widely used in the agricultural machine and to use the power source of the tractor, the mower had been widely used as a working machine for mowing. The mower is classified as a front mower, mid-mower, and rear mower according to the mounting position of the lower frame on tractor. The main structure of mower is composed of deck, gearbox, and blade. This study concerns a study on air flow characteristics of Mid-mower for tractor. An air flow characteristics of the Mid-mower deck was evaluated by the velocity vector, flow path, and total air flow according to the number of revolutions. As the analysis results, The inner path of designed deck had no effect on air flow.

The aspherical lens was designed to be able to array a focal point. For this reason, it has very curved surface. The aspherical lens is fabricated by injection molding or diamond turning machine. With the aspherical lens, tool marks and surface roughness affect the optical characteristics, such as transmissivity. However, it is difficult to polish free form surface shapes uniformly with conventional methods. Therefore, in this paper, the ultra-precision polishing method with MR fluid was used to polish an aspherical lens with 4-axis position control systems. A Tool path and polishing mechanism were developed to polish the aspherical lens shape. An MR polishing experiment was performed using a generated tool path with a PMMA aspherical lens after the turning process. As a result, surface roughness was improved from $R_a

This paper describes the design of a forged fitting form to acquire a method of product design measurement by target measurement standards. The pipefitting connects each pipe and combines seals and nipples with the pipes normally. Therefore, the section combined with the fitting pipe was measured by a 3D scanner, and the acquired measurement and the design measurement were obtained after modification of the forged fitting pipe by that standard. Moreover, the accuracy of the model was verified through leakage testing of the oil and verification of the design measurement for accuracy decisions on the design measurement after modification of the product.

In this study, AISI M2 powder was selected primarily through various pieces of literature in order to improve the hardness and wear resistance. Among the laser metal deposition parameters, laser power was studied to improve the deposition efficiency in the laser metal deposition using a diode-pumped disk laser. An SKD61 hot work steel plate and AISI M2 powder were used as a substrate and powder for laser metal deposition, respectively. Experiments for the laser metal deposition were carried out by changing the laser power and track layer. The quality of the track surface and cross-section after applying the single-layer method was better than that obtained from applying the multi-layer method. As the laser power increased, the track thickness was increased, and the surface roughness deviation was decreased. In laser power condition of 1.6kW, the maximum hardness of the deposition track was 790Hv. This value was 40% better than the hardness of the SKD61 after heat treatment.

In this paper, a model reference adaptive control (MRAC) scheme is applied for the precise and robust motion control of a pneumatic system with load variation. The reference model for MRAC is designed systematically using linear quadratic Gaussian control with loop transfer recovery (LQG/LTR). The sigmoid function of inverse velocity is used to compensate for the nonlinear friction force between the sliding parts. The experimental results show that MRAC effectively overcame the limit of the PID controller when there was unknown disturbance, including abrupt load variation and model uncertainty in the pneumatic control system.

This paper presents a method of predicting the machining parameters on the turning process of low carbon steel using a neural network with back propagation (BP) and particle swarm optimization (PSO). Cutting speed, feed rate, and depth of cut are used as input variables, while surface roughness and electric current consumption are used as output variables. The data from experiments are used to train the neural network that uses BP and PSO to update the weights in the neural network. After training, the neural network model is run using test data, and the results using BP and PSO are compared with each other.

The core activities of a bicycle manufacturer are design, engineering analysis, and manufacturing. Therefore, it is important to develop a configuration design system for bicycles in order to automate the design process and facilitate the use of design data in engineering analysis and manufacturing. In this paper, we present a method to develop a bicycle configuration design system based on the part-shape information model. The proposed method enables the construction of a CAD library using modeling functions with equations and parameters that are common to most 3D mechanical CAD systems. Furthermore, the part-shape information model ensures the independence between the configuration design system and the library, making it possible to extend the CAD library flexibly without changing the system architecture.

The press-fit shaft is an important part used in automobiles, vessels, and trains. This study proposes an optimized design method to reduce damage that may occur in the press-fitted shaft by modifying the shape of the boss step of the press-fitted shaft. To reduce the time and cost of running the optimized design method, an approximate design optimization is applied and an optimized algorithm is generated using a genetic algorithm that is widely used in engineering fields and an approximate model using a response surface method. The planned experiments for the data that are needed to generate the approximate model use a central composite design (CCD) and Latin hypercube sampling (LHS), and the results of the approximate optimization using the above two design of experiments are to be compared.

This study investigates the durability of a two-passenger bicycle frame under non-uniform fatigue load. The bicycle frame of Model 1 installed with reinforcement support has a 20% lower maximum equivalent stress than the existing Model 2. Model 1 has a maximum total deformation that is less than half that of Model 2. Model 1 has a higher maximum fatigue life than Model 2. In addition, Model 1 has lower fatigue damage than Model 2. Thus, the bicycle frame of Model 1 installed with reinforcement support can be described as safer, as it offers more strength than Model 2. Applying this result to the design of a real two-passenger bicycle frame under non-uniform fatigue load can effectively prevent fatigue damage and improve durability.

As riders do not sense damage to hub bearings due to the friction that occurs while riding, unexpected accidents can happen. Hub bearings can also be broken by cracks due to minor impact. Therefore, the vibration analysis of bike hub bearings is thought to be important. Two bike hub bearings were modelled in this study. The bolts at both ends of the bearings were fixed. The standard weight of a Korean man was assumed to be 70Kg, and a force of 700N was applied. As a result of this study, maximum deformations occurred in bolts at both ends of the central axis. Regarding displacement due to natural frequencies, Model 2 had less deformation than Model 1. Using the results of this study, the structural safety of the design of hub bearings can be estimated, and design plans for durable hub bearings can be suggested.

Ultrasonic machining (USM) does not involve heating or any electrochemical effects, and subsequently causes low surface damage, has small residual stress, and does not rely on the conductivity of the workpiece. These characteristics are suitable for the machining of brittle materials, such as glass or ceramics. However, USM for brittle materials generates cracks on the workpiece while machining, especially at the hole exit with a small diameter. In this study, wax coating was used to deposit wax on the back side of the workpiece to decrease the occurrence of cracks at the exit holes in USM, and it was finally removed with a cleaning process. The experimental results show that this technique is beneficial for restricting the occurrence of cracks in glass or ceramics.

There are many systems for cutting plates or pipes into a desired shape. A typical system is a plasma cutter. It uses plasma, which means that an effective design of the table supporting the workpiece is an important issue in order to ensure a long operational career. Conventional roller-support worktables have a short lifespan due to scratches from the plasma, and it is also difficult to maintain the roller balance. By using a bolt-fastening method, deformation and failure of the final product can occur due to the stress concentration at bolting points. To escape these issues, a polygon support and bracket fastening method was designed. Due to polygons having a number of support surfaces, when one surface has been damaged, it is possible to reuse the support by utilizing a different surface. The bracket-fastening method can extend the worktable lifetime and increase productivity by reducing stress concentration. In this paper, the polygon support/bracket-fastening method is compared with existing technologies. Consequently, performance benchmarks are verified through a structure analysis and experimentation.

The purpose of this study is to investigate friction characteristics according to micro-dimple patterns. The surface texturing of micro-dimple patterns was tested to examine the friction of pin-on-disk using flat-on-flat contact geometry. The patterns of both dimple circle and groove pattern were adopted to carry out the effect of those ones. In the low loads, such as 13.8N and 27.7N, the friction coefficients of groove pattern were lower than those of dimple circle pattern. In many other comparisons of normal loads, the groove pattern had lower friction forces, which showed the effect of surface texturing. The relationship between sliding time and friction forces showed that the increase of friction forces of groove pattern were relatively lower than those of dimple pattern. In conclusion, the dimple patterns of dimple-circle pattern and groove pattern strongly contributed to reducing the friction between contacting materials.

The purpose of this study is to predict the fatigue life of a planet carrier of a slewing reducer for a tower crane. To predict the fatigue life of the carrier, the inertia endurance test was carried out, and then the input torque profile for the reducer was obtained. The load profile acting on the planet pins that assembled the carrier was calculated from the measured input torque profile using commercial gearbox analysis software. The stress profiles of the carrier weak points were analyzed from the calculated load profile and boundary conditions using commercial FE software, and the stress cycles were determined using the rainflow counting method. Finally, the fatigue life of the carrier was predicted using the equivalent stress range by considering the effect of mean stress, and an S-N curve was drawn up using the GL guideline and the cumulative damage law.

The cryogenic cooling system should maintain the HTS power cable below 77 K. As the length of HTS power cables has increased, there have been many efforts to develop large capacity cryocoolers. Brayton, Joule-Thomson, and Claude refrigerators were considered for the large capacity cryocooler. Among the various cryocoolers, the Brayton refrigerator is the most competitive in terms of the HTS power cable. At present, it is thought that a 10-kW class refrigerator will be able to be used as a unit cooling system for the commercialization of HTS power cables in the near future. The Brayton refrigerator is composed of recuperative heat exchangers, a compressor, and a cryogenic turbo expander. Among the various components, the cryogenic turbo expander is the part that decreases the temperature, and it is the most significant component that is closely related with overall system efficiency. It rotates at high speed using high-pressure helium or neon gas at cryogenic temperatures. This paper describes the design of a 300-W class Brayton refrigeration cycle and the cryogenic turbo expander as a downscale model for the practical 10-kW class cycle. Flow and structural analyses are performed on the rotating impeller and nozzle to verify the efficiency and the design performance.

This study has focused on the deburring technology of a vacuum plate for MLCC lamination using electrolytic in-process dressing (ELID) grinding, and the magnetic-assisted polishing (MAP) process. The surface of the vacuum plate has many micro-holes for vacuum suction. They are easily blocked by the burrs created in the surface-flattening process, such as the conventional grinding process. In this study, the MAP process, the ELID grinding process, and an ultrasonic vibration table are examined to remove the micro-burrs that lead to the blockage of the holes. In the results of the experiments, the MAP process and ELID grinding technology showed significant improvements of surface roughness and deburring performance.